Democrats have a 2020 problem: Trump is good at elections

Polling after the State of the Union speech showed that President Trump has once again connected with at least enough voters to make him a 2020 favorite.

Photo: Doug Mills / AFP / Getty Images

Make no mistake, President Trump’s State of the Union address was the kickoff for his 2020 re-election campaign, and so far I’ve yet to see a Democrat who can beat him.

During the partial government shutdown over whether to fund Trump’s wall on the southern border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that the president deliver the annual address alone, from the Oval Office.

I can see why.

Alone, Trump is a frump. In front of a crowd, he’s electric.

No matter what you think of Trump’s message, his delivery was impressive. He stayed on script and kept referring to everyday heroes in the gallery, thus forcing the Democrats to stand and cheer.

It was populist theater, where presence and impression trump content.

And the overnight polling after the speech showed that once again, he connected with voters, at least enough voters to make him a 2020 favorite.

You can’t say the same for the Democratic contenders. They all have impressive credentials, winning personalities and positive messages, but none displays the “people personality” that our media-savvy president has mastered.

Nearly four years ago, when Trump announced his candidacy for president, I said he had a winning hand. He still does.

If he carefully picks his fights, Trump can turn the light back on Democrats and force us to defend our progressive wing’s “socialist” positions like health care for all, housing for all and guaranteed income.

Our candidates will have to pull further and further to the left to satisfy the party’s activist constituency, much like Republicans did in response to the rise of the Tea Party, and probably with the same results.

Our congressional efforts in 2018 benefited from Republican candidates’ inability to defend their relationship with Trump. But Trump can defend his relationship with himself very effectively.

Let’s just hope Democrats can figure out that we need to go beyond the left and motivate voters across the board, just as midterm congressional campaigns did under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.

We know we can win California and New York. The question is: Can we win the states we lost in 2016, or do we preach to the choir in an empty church?

The Franken Rule: The ghost of former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken has descended on Virginia, and there will be hell to pay.

When Franken was forced to resign by fellow Democrats over a photo of him leering over a sleeping woman taken years before he was elected, it reset the bar for everyone.

Now, the Democrats in Virginia who were on the threshold of securing that state for the next presidential run are in total disarray.

They have a governor and attorney general who did themselves up in blackface years before they took office, ancient mistakes by people who apparently have had otherwise exemplary careers. They now find themselves in front of media firing squads, thanks to the Franken Rule.

Two-term mayor of San Francisco, renowned speaker of the California Assembly, and widely regarded as the most influential African American politician of the late twentieth century, Willie L. Brown, Jr. has been at the center of California politics, government and civic life for four decades. His career spans the American presidency from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, and he’s worked with every California governor from Pat Brown to Arnold Schwarzenegger. From civil rights to education reform, tax policy, economic development, health care, international trade, domestic partnerships and affirmative action, he’s left his imprimatur on every aspect of politics and public policy in the Golden State. As mayor of California’s most cosmopolitan city, he refurbished and rebuilt the nation’s busiest transit system, pioneered the use of bond measures to build affordable housing, created a model juvenile justice system, and paved the way for a second campus of UCSF to serve as the anchor of a new development that will position the city as a center for the burgeoning field of biotechnology.

Today, he heads the Willie L. Brown Jr. Institute on Politics and Public Service, where he shares his knowledge and skills with a new generation of California leaders.